Mittens

December has arrived! The month of glimmering Christmas tree lights, cozy evenings of hot chocolate by the fire (who am I kidding? My glass will be filled with red wine!) and letters to Santa.

Oh…And advent calendars.

Being old enough to “get it” this year, I wanted to get something to help Tristan count down the days to Christmas. As much as I loved the little cardboard “chocolate-a-day” calendars when I was little, I was looking for something a little more.

I was delighted to see this great mitten idea on Kelle Hampton’s blog, and immediately stole the idea for my own use. Every day in December there will be something special in a mitten for Tristan. Some days I’ll put a treat, some days a little gift, and other days there will be a note telling him what fun Christmas activity we’ll be doing that day.

A trip to the dollar store and a whole lot of scotch tape later, and my mitten advent calendar was complete and proudly displayed on our overstuffed mantle. Twenty-four mittens, all in a row.

Today being day one of the advent calendar, I anxiously awaited grampa to arrive home with Tristan after preschool, thinking he would be so excited to discover the treasure awaiting him inside the first mitten. I brought him over to the fireplace and explained to him how this fun game would work.

I was astonished when he had absolutely no interest in taking a peek inside that first mitten.

My advent calendar dreams were quickly being dashed with each adamant “NO!” every time I tried to entice him. I told him today there was going to be something special to eat inside the mitten thinking that would be the clincher for sure.

Still nothing.

After more prodding an exasperated Tristan called out, “No Mommy! I don’t want to eat the mitten!!”

Oh.

Ummm, suddenly I understood his hesitation.

“You don’t eat the mitten buddy! There is a special treat INSIDE the mitten!”

With that, I pulled the end of the mini smarties box out of the mitten so it was visible and it suddenly became crystal clear to Mr. Hesitation. He immediately ran to get a stool to reach the mitten, grabbed his prize and swallowed the box down in seconds.

I think the process will go a lot smoother tomorrow! 🙂

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This entry was posted on December 1, 2010 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Motherhood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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